STEAD AT NEWFANE, VT. 56

THE HOMESTEAD AT AMHERST, MASS. 60
_Now owned by Mr. Hiram Eaton, of New York._

A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF MONSON, MASS. 74

THE REV. JAMES TUFTS 78

WILLIAMS COLLEGE BUILDINGS, WILLIAMSTOWN, MASS. 82

THE OLD KNOX COLLEGE BUILDINGS, GALESBURG, ILL. 86

STATE UNIVERSITY BUILDINGS AT COLUMBIA, MO. 88

EARLY PORTRAITS OF EUGENE FIELD 92

MELVIN L. GRAY 96

MRS. MELVIN L. GRAY 100

MRS. EUGENE FIELD 110

ROBSON AND CRANE IN "SHARPS AND FLATS" 204

FIELD AT WORK 218
_The caricature from a drawing by Sclanders._

FRANCIS WILSON 228

WILLIAM J. FLORENCE 234

MODJESKA 242

JESSIE BARTLETT DAVIS 256

SOL SMITH RUSSELL 266

DR. FRANK W. REILLY 280

"FATHER PROUT" 288
_Francis Mahony._

EUGENE FIELD

CHAPTER I

PEDIGREE

"Sir John Maundeville, Kt.," was his prototype, and Father Prout was
his patron saint. The one introduced him to the study of British
balladry, the other led him to the classic groves of Horace.

"I am a Yankee by pedigree and education," wrote Eugene Field to Alice
Morse Earle, the author of "The Sabbath in Puritan New England," and
other books of the same flavor, "but I was born in that ineffably
uninteresting city, St. Louis."

How so devoted a child of all that is queer and contradictory in New
England character came to be born in "Poor old Mizzoorah," as he so
often wrote it, is in itself a rare romance, which I propose to tell
as the key to the life and works of Eugene Field. Part of it is told
in the reports of the Supreme Court of Vermont, part in the most
remarkable special pleas ever permitted in a chancery suit in America,
and the best part still lingers in the memory of the good people of
Newfane and Brattleboro, Vt., where "them Field boys" are still
referred to as unaccountable creatures, full of odd conceits, "an'
dredful sot wh